I went for a run at lunch today, listening to my iPod. Towards the end of my run, the song "Before the Day," by the Bats came on. For some reason, this song always makes me think of my departed friends, izmar and J--, I suppose because it's such a modest, beautiful, intelligent song, it just reminds me of how humble, yet still scintillatingly ( Read more... )

I haven't been following it all that closely, but apparently there's a lot riding on a patent case brought by Novartis in India. The availability of many life-saving medications for people in developing countries is at stake ( Read more... )

I've only been at my new job for 2 months, and I'm already moving into a corner office, with a view of the capitol building. It might be even nicer than my old office in DC, which had a view of Massachusetts Avenue and Union Station. I used to enjoy watching the gulls hover on the wind currents whooshing down Mass Ave.

We're going home shopping in Madison today. I feel like such an adult.

I've really been digging Rollerskate Skinny's "Horsedrawn Wishes" -- a combination of My Bloody Valentine and Pet Sounds era Beach Boys.

Why do bad things happen to good people ( Read more... )

"What can the farthest-reaching mind say of this? Nothing; the book of fate is closed to our view. Man, a stranger to himself, is unknown to man. What am I? Where am I? Where shall I go? From where did I come? Atoms tormented on this heap of mud, which death engulfs, and with which fate plays; yet thinking atoms, atoms whose eyes, guided by ( Read more... )

I had no idea ( Read more... )

Speaking of blowing it all up, I was just reading about an 18th Century French priest names Jean Meslier. He served his tiny parish with quiety humility for 40 years, every year donating all of the residual income left from his abtemious lifestyle to charity. After he passed away, he left three copies of his "testament," to his congregation. The ( Read more... )

I was walking to work on icy Madison sidewalks the other morning, listening to Blur's album Parklife. For the first time, I really paid close attention to Albarn' lyrics for "Tracy Jacks," which I always assumed was a bouncy tune about a kind of lager-swilling lout. In fact, it's a lot darker and more exisistential: Tracy is a civil servant that ( Read more... )